Astronomers Selected the Top Ten Most Amazing Pictures Taken
by Hubble Space Telescope in Last 16 Years
"...they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply
strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."

~Michael Hanlon/AH (Daily Mail, Nov 25th,
2006)

Hubble Telescope's top ten greatest
space photographs (until today)

The Sombrero
Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture
taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy,
officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has
800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

The Ant Nebula,
a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an
ant when observed using ground-based telescopes... The nebula lies
within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.

In third place
is Nebula NGC 2392, called "Eskimo" because it looks like a face
surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of
comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000
light years from Earth.

At four is the
Cat's Eye Nebula.

The Hourglass
Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a "pinched-in-the-middle" look
because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre.

In sixth place
is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in
length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).

The Perfect
Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away,
described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of
oxygen, sulphur and other elements.

Starry Night, so
named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It
is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.

The
glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling
cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the
distant Canis Major constellation.

The Trifid
Nebula. A 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here, it is
where new stars are being born.